1 Chronicles 22

The chapter opens on the site secured at Ornan’s floor and turns at once to preparation. David, who cannot build, will provide: he gathers iron, brass beyond weighing, cedar without number, and hewn stone in abundance, because the house that is to be builded for Yahweh must be exceeding magnificent. The warrior spends his last strength stockpiling for a house he will never see roofed. The builder of the kingdom is not the builder of the temple; the man of war makes ready what the man of peace will raise. The heaped materials are the substance of the spiritual house too — gold for faith, silver for redemption, brass and iron for strength, timber for glory, stone for foundation — all of it gathered by the warrior in his own time of trouble and poverty, then left for the man of peace to add thereto, as the Lord prepared every material of the living temple in the poverty of his first coming (Phil 2) and will complete it in glory at his return. And it is strangers in the land — captives of David’s wars — whose hands hew the stones, the foreshadow of the Gentiles brought in to build the house of Yahweh (Isa 60:10).

The stones are hewn before they are laid. David has the pattern already in hand (28:11–12), so every block is cut to size at the quarry — which is why, when the house finally rises, there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building (1 Kgs 6:7). The noise is all in the preparing; the building is silent. The living stones are shaped now, under the tools, in the time of trouble; the house they are being shaped for goes up without a sound.

And the chapter quietly names what acceptable building requires. A heart that desires the work and knows Yahweh’s will; wisdom and understanding; obedience — then shalt thou prosper, if thou takest heed to fulfil the statutes; and courage — be strong, and of good courage; dread not, nor be dismayed. Desire without knowledge builds the wrong thing; knowledge without courage builds nothing.

The reason is stated plainly and it is doctrine, not merely biography: thou hast shed blood abundantly… thou shalt not build an house unto my name, because thou hast shed much blood upon the earth in my sight. The hands that establish the kingdom by the sword are the wrong hands for the house of worship. Conquest and sanctuary belong to two different offices — and the canon keeps them apart on purpose, so that the temple is the work of rest, not of war.

Then the promise narrows to the son and his name. Behold, a son shall be born to thee, who shall be a man of rest… for his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quietness unto Israel in his days. Solomon is Shelomoh, from shalom — the man of peace, the man of rest. He shall build an house for my name; and he shall be my son, and I will be his father. The covenant of October 3 returns, now fastened to a name that means peace: the house of Yahweh is built by the Prince of Peace, the Son whom the Father owns.

Solomon is the immediate fulfilment, but the type runs straight to Christ. David the warrior-king clears the ground; the greater Son of David, the true man of rest, builds the house that lasts — and Hebrews makes the rest itself the goal of the whole journey, the rest that remains for the people of God. The temple is the fruit of peace given, not peace earned by the sword.

David’s closing charge is all urgency and courage: be strong, and of good courage; dread not, nor be dismayed. He commands the princes of Israel to help his son, to set your heart and your soul to seek Yahweh your God. The dying king’s last energy is bent on one thing — that the house be built — and he spends it rallying others to the work he cannot finish himself.

The man of war prepares; the man of rest builds — and the house of Yahweh is the work of peace given, not of the sword.

Ezekiel 32

The last lament over Pharaoh opens with a double figure: thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a dragon in the seas. The crocodile of chapter 29 returns, thrashing in his rivers, fouling the waters with his feet — and Yahweh spreads his net over him and hauls him onto the open field for the birds and beasts. The proud sea-monster is dragged out of his element to rot in the sun; the power that ruled the Nile ends as carrion.

The heart of the oracle is a darkening of the heavens. I will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give her light. All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, and set darkness upon thy land. This is the prophets’ settled language for the fall of a ruling order: the political heaven — the sun, moon, and stars that govern a nation’s sky — put out. Isaiah uses it of Babylon, Joel of the day of Yahweh, the Lord himself of the end of the Jewish age. When a great power falls, its lights go dark.

The sword that does it is not Babylon’s. Nebuchadnezzar is the sword of Yahweh — my servant, Jeremiah calls him, hired to a work he never understood — and the same drawn blade will be called for again against the last confederacy: I will call for a sword against him throughout all my mountains (38:21). The empires think they are wielding; they are being wielded. The word that summons them is itself the sharper edge — quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword.

The rest of the chapter is a long descent into the pit. Pharaoh and his multitude go down to the nether parts of the earth, and there they find company: Asshur, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, Edom, the princes of the north, the Zidonians — all the proud conquerors, gone down to hell with their weapons of war, their swords laid under their heads. It is the grave’s great levelling: the mighty of the nations lie still together, the silence of sheol swallowing every empire that ever terrified the living.

The irony is aimed with care. This is a funeral procession, staged in the style Egypt herself made famous — the dead king borne down with his retinue to his resting place, met at the door by those who went before him. No nation on earth spent more on the afterlife than Egypt; none built more elaborately for the journey past death. And the prophet walks Pharaoh through the underworld to show him what is actually there: not the fields of the blessed, but Asshur and Elam and Meshech and Tubal lying in rows with their swords under their heads. The pyramid-builders’ hope is answered with a pit full of silent kings.

This descent is the grave, not a place of torment — the dead bear their shame in the dust where there is no work nor device. The picture is of pride brought to nothing: the king who said my river is mine own lies down with all the other kings who said the same, and the only thing they share now is the pit. Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his multitude — cold comfort, the company of the equally fallen.

The dragon hauled from his river, the political heaven darkened, the proud kings laid down together in the pit — every empire’s sky goes out, and the grave levels them all.

Ephesians 3–4

Paul unfolds the mystery committed to him: that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel. The middle wall is not merely lowered but abolished — Jew and Gentile are one body, and this open secret is now made known unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places… by the ecclesia. The called community is the stage on which the manifold wisdom of God is displayed to the powers that be.

The prayer that follows is offered to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named — and the naming runs the direction we usually reverse. Fatherhood is not a metaphor borrowed from our households and lent to Yahweh; every household on earth is the borrower, named after his. Which is why the chapters that follow can order fathers, children, husbands, wives, masters and servants by the pattern of the Father and his Son: the family in the house is a copy, and it is meant to look like the original.

His prayer reaches for the inner dimensions of that wisdom: that they be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ dwell in your hearts by faith, that being rooted and grounded in love they might grasp the breadth, and length, and depth, and height and know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge. The love that surpasses knowing is the thing to be known — and the end of it is to be filled with all the fulness of God. The temple of living stones is filled with the presence it was built to house. Those four measured dimensions — breadth, length, depth, height — form a perfect cube, the shape of the Most Holy Place and of the city that lieth foursquare, and the cube ties to the perfect man of the next chapter: the measured sanctuary becomes the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The dwelling-place and the Man are one figure.

Chapter 4 turns to the sevenfold oneness that holds the body together: one body, and one Spirit… one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. Seven ones — the covenant-number — binding the new humanity into a single confession. Unity is not an achievement the saints manufacture; it is a given reality they are to keep… in the bond of peace.

The ascended Christ then gave gifts unto men — apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers — for the perfecting of the saints… till we all come… unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The body grows up into its Head. No longer children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine — the same storm-tossed ship the canon always warns of — but grown up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. The temple of chapter 2 is a body that matures into the full stature of the One it belongs to.

The walk that follows is the putting off and putting on. Put off… the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts… and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. This is the change of the mode of life, the daily reckoning — not the mortal nature magically removed, but the old manner of living crucified and the new manner put on. Grieve not the holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption — the sealing looks forward; the redemption of the body is still ahead.

The mystery is one new body filled with the fulness of God, growing up into its Head — old manner of life put off, the new man put on, unity kept in the bond of peace.